Pursuing your passions

Crowd-funding can be a great way to finance a project–if you know how to do it right. Janet Hinkel did her research. She put in the necessary effort, stayed organized, and is about to see her dream project completed. She raised nearly $12,000 in a thirty day campaign on Kickstarter to finance the publishing of her own curated Tarot deck which she calls the Tarot of Delphi.

She did it by taking a serious approach, she made up spreadsheets to help her organize information and she mapped out a strategy. She joined groups on Facebook where she thought she might gain supporters, and asked up front if it would be okay to promote her project in each group. She spent 9 months preparing to launch her campaign. She chose the 30 day campaign because her research indicated the shorter 30 day option resulted in more successful campaign outcomes.

In addition, she offered very appealing rewards at each level of support and a range of support levels. Check out her campaign here:

The cards themselves are exquisitely designed. Her idea came after exploring a number of ideas for online businesses, and then experimenting with Tarot and looking at Victorian art. She did not find any Tarot decks that were quite like what she had in mind.

She had been working with Tarot since 1997. She was raised in the New Thought tradition and found the Tarot to be an effective way to maintain some of the contemplation practices she had learned growing up.

Hinkel has had a lot of help and support from her husband, Quinn Caya. She set up a DBA as Aello Publishing. The cards are due to be published in June 2014 but for those who pre-0rder the shipping is free until June 1

In addition to the Facebook groups she joined, she had spent months following blogs on related topics, reading them thoroughly so she would understand their focus, and she tracked how much traffic they received. She was tracking them on her spreadsheets, she had them categorized by theme, her aim was to gain a huge amount of traffic for her campaign by doing guest posts or having these bloggers write about her project.

She also wrote her own blog, using material she had been compiling for a book to go with the deck. She had share buttons for Facebook, Twitter and her Kickstarter page to make it as easy as possible for readers to share. She also put the share page in all her e-mails. She sent out e-mails to friends and family some of whom she expected to support the project, and others whom she wanted to know about it, though her expectation of support from them was not as high.

Facebook resulted in a very high number of sales conversions. She spent between ten and thirteen hours per day promoting her campaign across all the strategies she had chosen, including on Facebook, during the 30 day launch from November 12 to December 12, 2013. “People put the campaign up and just think people will find it,” she said. That is why many campaigns do not reach their goals. All of her preparation and dedication is finally paying off, however.

She also had spreadsheets for media contacts, freelance writers, and online forums and magazines on related topics. “You build a fan base, and Kickstarter helped me get feedback from many of these groups on our design. People feel they have an ownership stake in your project,” Hinkel said. Throughout the campaign she kept updating her backers and encouraging them to share.

The meanings for the cards are based in traditional Tarot interpretations of the Rider-Waite-Smith decks and there are the typical 78 cards found in such decks. When we spoke she was just getting the proofs from the printer and was giving them feedback to improve the quality of the final product. For the public launch of the deck in June she is also purchasing vintage and antique fabric and materials to make Tarot bags to hold the deck. The Tarot bags she had made for the Kickstarter campaign were completely sold out.

And for readers of this blog, Janet has a special offer! If you enter FreedomPowerJoy at checkout she will give you 10% off of your order through the month of June!

Have you or anyone you know thought about obtaining crowd-funding for a project? Share this article!

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